Marsha's Blog

 Last Leg to Bangkok HELLO ALL, This morning we’re sending this out from Bangkok!  Tony got the opportunity to share his continuing vision for his discipleship course with some of our churches here, as well as recruiting students for the Hawaii-based seminary, , so of course that was like saying ‘sickim’ to a dog and here we are. Before you think it’s all luxury and plush, remember that after Covid, Bangkok and several other Asian countries have rebounded with first world prices, so we had to knock a couple of stars off our usual accommodation, as well as flying as grateful squashed sardines in the last seats of the airplanes with my lovely daughter’s ‘staff travel’ airline status. Nonetheless, we’re back in one of the cities we love so much. We can’t wait to start meeting friends, shopping and eating back those pounds we just lost!  Last night in the taxi for over an hour because of the traffic, we enjoyed remembering some of those impossible Thai words we learned after ...

 Dear Friends, I want to thank you for several of your sweet responses to my nonsensical blog of last week.  I realized after I sent it that it had no connection to anything biblical or even Christian.  Sorry about that. But as I suggested, may have prophesied, we really did take a shellacking during the weekend, I’ll tell you about it if you care. Tony and I went to bed last Friday night, all excited about taking Isaac, our oldest Grandchild, alone with just the two of us, to Sydney, for his ‘maturing into the teens’ weekend. We laughed as we went to bed, mentioning that we were probably more excited than he was, and  we, like little school children, wouldn’t be able to get to sleep. Fortunately, however, we slept blissfully for about two hours. Then, right at the stroke of midnight, when ALL the flights, hotel, etc went unconditionally non-refundable, Tony raced to the bathroom with a surprise attack of what the Africans used to refer to as ‘The Missionary Two Step...

I'm writing you today from Sydney. We’ve brought our oldest grandson for a weekend in the big city now that he's reached the ripe old age of 13.  Looking at him, almost all grown up and carrying the image of his Mom and Dad makes me tear up every time. Just to imagine all that’s gone before, in and thru so many lives and now reflected in this young man! It makes me wonder how much of what we see around us has a great story to tell. Here's just one example, from an article I came across the other day. I hope you enjoy it. I quote...  “The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.  Why was that gauge used?  Well, because that's the way they built them in England, and English engineers designed the first US railroads. “Why did the English build them like that? “Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used.   “So why ...

Thank you for all your sweet responses to my blog last week, I also heard several 'testimonies' of others who have lasting memories of people and what they did to influence them. Today I'd like to hit the other side of the coin and mention something that happened last summer when we were in the States. We'd been travelling around the country for three months in a rental car (actually several) and had purchased a fair amount of 'stuff'. Relishing in the fact that in a big country like the US, you're going to have some reliable chain stores, Walmart possibly being the most ever present and obvious.  There are a lot of things I like as well as dislike about Walmart, but at least you can rely on their return policies. Except as we travelled thru, we saw more and more the new thinking of the execs I'm sure, of keeping the money in the store.  So now, instead of a full refund either in cash or back on your credit card, they have begun to issue STORE gift cards...